


Sanding

by ameliacareful



Series: Massa Carnis [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bigots, Explicit Language, M/M, Sam is a slave, slaveAU, very slow burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 15:29:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12368676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliacareful/pseuds/ameliacareful
Summary: Dean learns a lot about the realities of slavery.





	Sanding

#  #  #

 

            “How do credit cards work?”

            Sometimes Sam is the smartest guy Dean had ever met. He’s apparently taught himself to read and now spends all his time on the laptop. He’s teaching himself Latin. And fractions, for some reason.

            Then there’s a moment like this.

            It’s a little after ten at night and Dean’s driving, so at least explaining stuff keeps him awake. “Like, how do you use them, how do they work?” he asks.

            “No, like, I get how you use them. You give them to people and they treat them like, you know, money.”

            Fair enough. “That’s pretty much it.”

            “They have all these commercials for how to deal with credit card debt.”

            Dean tries to zero in on what Sam’s asking. “Yeah. People put more on the credit card than they can afford.”

            Sam nods but it isn’t clear that he understands. “Are you in debt?”

            Lightbulb. Sam has no concept of credit card fraud.

            “No,” Dean says. “Hunting doesn’t actually pay. You know jobs pay? You work forty hours a week and someone gives you money for it.”

            They’re on their way to Wisconsin for a salt and burn. They haven’t heard anything from John. Explaining how credit cards worked to Sam is at least a diversion.

            Sam is, predictably, appalled that they were stealing.

            “They’re big companies,” Dean says. “We’re barely a drop in the bucket and really, ridding the world of monsters is a service. Think of it as a tax.”

            That leads to a long explanation of taxes, the different kinds of taxes, and they are quickly on shaky ground. Dean really doesn’t know much about taxes. Or care.

            They continue not to talk about Lawrence.

            Dean doesn’t really know what to do. He believes Sam’s his brother. Really believes it. It has a rightness to it, a feeling of something slotting home. The slave thing is…it just has to go away but his dad still isn’t actually answering calls. He’d left a couple of messages but nothing specifically about Sam.

            Dean’s last call had been blunt. “Dad. We have to get the fucking barcode off Sam’s hand. Now. Call me.”

            No answer.

            Dean is thinking of forging his dad’s signature on the title but Sam says that he looked it up on the internet and it’s actually really complicated. Dean’s going to look it up. They have to do this right. They have to get Sam out of the system.

 

#

 

            Wisconsin’s cold. Dean wakes up and Sam wasn’t in the room or the bathroom. He finds him outside.

            “You could have at least got coffee,” Dean says which honestly isn’t fair, Sam carries no money and won’t take anything unless Dean gives it to him. Except he still hoards food. (Dean pretends not to notice the half bags of pretzels tucked in Sam’s duffel. Dean has porn, Sam has pretzels. To each his own.)

            “It’s snowing,” Sam says, and dimples.

            Big fat fluffy white flakes are drifting down. The ground is still too warm so there’s nothing on the ground.

            “It doesn’t look like it’s going to stick.”

            Sam holds out his hand and watches snowflakes land on it and melt.

            “Fuck,” Dean says. “This isn’t the first time you’ve ever seen—”

            Sam shrugs, which is as much as saying ‘yes’.

            “Well enjoy it,” Dean says. “Cause you’re gonna hate it by January.”

            Sam doesn’t appear to believe it. He sticks his tongue out, trying to catch a snowflake. Dean doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

 

#

 

            They walk into the restaurant, Sam behind Dean, head down. It’s not Dean’s usual kind of restaurant, at least not since Sam has been with him. It has white tablecloths and candles in jars on all the tables.

            Dean mutters, “They better have pizza.” Then he smiles his 100,000 watts of power smile at the hostess. “Hi.”

            She melts like an ice cube in the Sahara. “Two?”

            Dean flicks his head a bit. “Slave. So just one.”

            “Oh!” She looks Sam up and down. It feels familiar but Sam wishes he were going to eat with Dean. Still, this was his idea. “You want a cushion?”

            “Yeah,” Dean says. “No, wait. I’m sorry, I just got into town late last night and I’m out of chow. Any chance you guys could rustle up something he could eat in back?”

            “I don’t know…” she says.

            “I’ll cover it,” Dean says and a couple of twenties materialize.

            She has big dark eyes and everything about her says ‘really uncomfortable with this’. Sam figures he’s going to end up sitting in the Impala. But she looks at Dean and Sam can see it. Waves of handsomeness and charisma washing over her. “Let me check.”

            She disappears in the back.

            “This sucks,” Dean says under his breath.

            Sam is in full slave mode and can’t answer. Slaves don’t answer. Don’t justify that it’s a good idea. Don’t argue. They just study their shoes and hope things don’t go wrong.

            The girl bounces back out. “No problem!” she says.

            “Thank you,” Dean reads her name tag, “Annalise. Did I say that right? Annalise?”

            “Perfectly!” she says.

            She seats Dean and leads Sam back to the kitchen.

            The change from the white linen tablecloths and the soft rock to the noise of the kitchen is jarring. The kitchen is all stainless steal and hustle. “¡Detrás!” someone yelled. A dishwasher’s running.

            What is it about free people that they require all this theater in their lives; that they don’t want to see the work that keeps them fed and their homes clean?

            There are four kitchen slaves; two line cooks, a prep guy, and the dishwasher. Overseeing all of them is the chef. “What the fuck am I supposed to feed him?” he asks.

            “I don’t know. What do these guys eat?” Annalise asks, gesturing at the kitchen staff. “It’s forty bucks, you can find something for that, right?”

            “Luis! Check the walk-in for leftovers! Don’t touch the ragu unless you guys want to go hungry!”

            “Yessir,” the prep guy says. He checks and comes back with a pan. “Lasagna from Tuesday,” he says. It’s Friday.

            “Tuesday?”

            Luis holds up the pan.

            “Which one of you morons left food from TUESDAY in the fucking walk-in!”

            Luis scoops cold lasagna into a bowl and hands it to Sam while the chef screams and swears. Then he disappears into the walk-in with orders to clean out anything that didn’t belong there because all they needed was a health inspector with a hard on and they were shut down, did they understand????? Nobody seems afraid, despite all the swearing.

            One of the line cooks says Sam can eat out back.

            Out back is an alley. It’s chilly but quiet after the noise of the kitchen. It’s stopped snowing. An industrial brown dumpster takes up most of one parking space and the other three have cars so Sam sits down near the dumpster and eats his lasagna. It’s a clump of layers of red, cream, green and meat and it’s really tasty, even cold. Sam commits it to memory. ‘ _La-zan-ya’_. He’ll order it if he ever sees it on a menu.

            He’s finished when one of the line cooks comes out with a cup of coffee and says, “Hey.”

            Sam smiles, relieved. He was assuming no one would pass up the chance to exchange a little gossip but he’d started to worry that no one would talk to him. “Great food.”

            The guy nods. “The lasagna’s good here.”

            “You eat good?”

            “Yeah,” the guy says. “We eat good. You?”

            Sam shrugs. “Sometimes. I’ve eaten a lot of stock chow.” It felt wrong to let the guy think that Dean was that kind of guy but it was a way to bond, right?

            “Fuck,” the guy says. “I ate that stuff in prison. It blows, man.”

            Sam might have argued a few month ago, said it was better than being hungry, but he’s been eating too well with Dean to say that now. The guy’s a felony slave. Three strikes and you go into the slave system. Usually then on to a factory or farm where you were worked to death in a few years. Guy’s lucky to have ended up in a kitchen.

            “That dude don’t look like no slave owner,” the guy says.

            Cause Dean’s really not your typical slave owner. No Lexus. No big house that needs staff. “His dad, actually. They have a company. I’m Sam.”

            “Manny,” the guy says. “What kind of company?”

            “Pest control,” Sam says. “Specialists. They take care of weird shit. Spiders that come in from South America and legs eggs in your place, then suddenly you’ve got a couple thousand venomous baby South American spiders hatching.”

            Manny shudders. “Fuck man. That’s tough.”

            “Better than hospitality,” Sam says.

            Manny sips his coffee. “You got that. You born in the system?”

            Sam nods. “But I was six feet tall when I was sixteen. Guys don’t want that. I was lucky not to end up on a farm.” Sam doesn’t ask Manny how he got into the system. You don’t ask a guy what he did. Chances are it’s something like drugs. Sam wonders if maybe Manny could get him some weed. He hasn’t smoked anything since Walt took him and it would be nice to get high. But not worth it.

            Manny hands Sam the cup of coffee to take a sip from. It’s good coffee. Sam carefully pulls a cigarette out of the hem of his shirt and offers it to Manny.

            Manny’s eyes light up. Predictably. Cigarettes are currency among prisoners and slaves. Sam doesn’t smoke but he had Dean buy a pack. “Oh man,” Manny says. “I don’t got a light.”

            “Keep it. I can get more.”

            “‘Aight,” Manny grins.

            They talk. Manny is originally from Texas. Had lived in Arizona before he went into the system. Sam tells a pest control story about a squirrel in a fireplace that involved the squirrel running out of the chimney with it’s tail on fire and setting the couch alight which he’d actually read on the internet on Dean’s laptop but which has Manny laughing.

            Sam’s beginning to think he’ll have to just figure out a way to ask when Manny starts telling him about the weird thing that had happened to one of the servers. “She lives out on Broddus Rd.,” he said. “Shelly’s a nice person, treats people fairly, you know.”

            Sam knows. Was nice to slaves.

            ‘She came into work a couple of weeks ago all freaked out…”

 

#

 

            “…because someone left a note on the windshield of her car,” Sam says. “It says it’s from someone called ‘the Watcher’ and that their job is to watch over Broddus Rd.” They’re at a gas station and Dean is pumping gas into the Impala. “That their dad was the Watcher from the sixties until they took over, and that their grandfather was the Watcher from the 30’s until the father took over. They asked her if she was willing to do what she had to do to protect everyone on Broddus Rd.”

            “So, creepy ex-boyfriend,” Dean says.

            Sam kind of cocks his head.

            “Stuff like this, it’s always the boyfriend,” Dean explains.

            “But get this,” Sam says. “She gets a second note telling her that the street has to run with blood. Then a third note about how they know which bedroom is hers and everybody who lives on the road.”

            Dean shrugs. “Still sounds like boyfriend.”

            “Then last week she’s found dead, hanging in a tree with her throat slit.”

            “Fucked up boyfriend.”

            “Almost 50 feet up in the tree. No blood under the tree and a trail of blood for something like 500 feet right down the middle of Broddus Road. Also, no tracks or evidence of machinery like a crane to get her up that high and despite the absence of blood anywhere but on the road, pretty far from the tree, she appears to have been hung and _then_ had her throat slit. Manny said her head almost came off.”

            “Huh. That does sound like our kind of thing.”

            “Yeah, and rumor says it’s not the first time it’s happened.”

            “Okay. So you want to hit the library and I’ll see if she’s got family and scope out Broddus Road. Good work, Sammy.”

            Sam nods, businesslike but inside there’s a little glow. _Good work, Sammy._ He hates when people call him Sammy. But not Dean.

            Dean drops him off at the library, giving him a twenty.

            “What’s this for?” Sam asks.

            “Copies. And there’s a convenience store if you want to get an apple or something.” Dean points across the street. “I might be awhile.”

            The library is a white building out of the 70’s, low slung and showing signs that it was not really built to last. Inside the carpet was worn. Sam was getting used to libraries. Dean had shown him the Harry Potter movies and he’d read about them in books, so before he went to one he had this idea of them—old, beautiful, with tall shelves. They aren’t like that. They have books but also magazines and computers and surprisingly, small children. Mothers bring small children to the library for all sorts of reasons. Still, he loves them. All the books, available to anyone. Dean wrote him a letter saying it was Sam’s job to look up records for the family business and he had been taught to read and write specifically for that purpose.

            The research desk is a curving thing, and seated behind it is a woman with fine pale hair that flips up at the ends. Sam clears his throat.

            “Can I help you?”

            Sam hands her the letter saying it’s his job to look up records.

            She looks at him and then looks at the letter. Then back at him. “Hi,” she says overly friendly. “What do you need?”

            “Um, the back issues of the local newspaper?”

            She was surprised. She has pale blue eyes. “We do but they’re on microfilm. Can you run a microfilm reader?” Her eyes flick across the back of his hand, the bar code.

            “Yes ma’am.”

            “We don’t get much call for them. Come on! What do you need them for?”

            “Um, my owners are doing a historical survey of towns. I look for some things and then they check them and, you know, do historical research stuff.” Sam lets the nervousness show. “I just do the first look, you know?”

            “What kind of historical things?”

            “Lots of different things. Right now they’re doing a project on crimes and strange happenings in small towns. So, I, uh, look for that.”

            The librarian lites up. “That sounds really kind of fun!”

            Sam smiles. “It is.”

            “You must be very smart,” she says. “If you don’t mind my asking, are you a felon-slave?”

            “No ma’am. I was raised in a crèche. I’m really lucky to have been bought by these people.”

            Something passes over her face, some distaste. She’s anti-slavery he’s sure. Anti-slavery people made him feel a little more at ease. Wisconsin was a state with a pretty high proportion of pro-slavery people. People who voted for law and order. There are only a couple of ways to become a slave. One was to be born into it. The other was to have committed crimes sufficient to have your personhood legally revoked. And then he figured there were the occasional odd people like him. Thrown into the system.

            She tells him about a bunch of crimes. A doctor who murdered his wife and blamed it on an intruder and how it divided the town. A kid in the sixties who took LSD, murdered his parents, put them into the trunk of his car and drove around for several days.

            “Anything ever happen on Broddus Road?” he askes.

            She looked at him. “How did you hear about that?”

            “We’re following a lead, about repeating crimes?”

            “Repeating crimes. I guess it is, really. You know about Shelly Grovonich, the waitress from Leoni’s?”

            “Yes ma’am,” Sam says. Taking the risk he said, “It’s the earlier crime we’re interested in.”

            She shows him a microfilm reader. “I don’t remember the exact year. 1966 or ’67. Let me grab a couple of boxes of microfiche. We should get this stuff digitized but there’s no budget…”

            Sam loves this part, sitting in the library looking through records. He can forget everything but the things he’s looking at; small town newspapers with their 60’s style advertisements. Bell bottoms and grocery stores and dry cleaners. He finds the murder in November of ’67. Kyle Olson, found hung in a tree.

            The librarian is named Carol. She makes copies for him. Her niceness is making him uncomfortable. She keeps saying things like, “Is there anything else you need? You want some coffee?” She’s not offering anyone else coffee and he knows she’s trying to make him comfortable but a) a cup of coffee doesn’t really make him not a slave and b) he just wants to be invisible. Like everyone else.

            He folds the copies into a square and sticks them in his jacket pocket and goes out to wait for Dean. It’s about 4:00 in the afternoon and it’s getting colder. The wind has picked up. Sam’s feet are cold and he shifts from foot to foot.

            He could go back inside the library and wait but then Carol might want to be super nice to him and it feels awkward so he walks across to the convenience store to get coffee or something.

            Parked in front of the convenience store is a pick-up truck with a bunch of bumper stickers including a Minuteman sticker and the back window has a MAD logo. Men Against Degeneracy. Sam almost walks back to the library but it’s a convenience store. He’s just going to get coffee. He sticks his hands in his pockets and goes inside.

            It’s warm and smells of hotdogs. The clerk is a kid, a young girl with dyed black hair and a lot of eye make-up. She looks about thirteen but is probably sixteen. There are three guys by the coffee so Sam looks at snacks, waiting for them to leave. They’re white. One of them is the truck owner, Sam’s sure, from the tattoo of the lightning bolt and iron cross on his neck.

            Sam keeps his head down until they leave. He makes himself a coffee and hands the twenty to the girl behind the cash register.

            “You got any change?” she asks.

            Sam digs through his pockets for the change left over from the copies. He sees her see the barcode on his left hand. Before she can say anything he digs out his pass as well.

            She doesn’t even care, just takes his thirteen cents and hands him back bills.

            He resigns himself to drinking his coffee and them going back to the library to wait for Dean. He steps outside and sips it. It’s okay coffee. Dean lives on coffee so Sam has learned a lot about good, bad, and indifferent coffee.

            “Hey boy, what are you doing with that?” It’s the guy with the tattoo and his two friends. They’re standing at the corner of the building smoking cigarettes. Sam has his left hand in his pocket but they must have seen his barcode somehow.

            “I’m sorry, sir?” he says.

            “You pay for that?” lightning and iron cross says.

            “Yessir.” Sam prays for Dean to come back about now. He glances back but the girl drops her eyes rather than meet his and he knows he’s fucked.

            “That’s mighty nice, having a cup of coffee,” the guy says.

            One of the other guys snickers.

            “Yessir,” Sam says and starts walking across the parking lot. He’ll wait in the library.

            “Where you going?”

            “My master—”

            “Are you walking away from me, boy!”

            Sam stops. “No sir. But my master is picking me up in a minute or two. At the, the library.” Just let him get to the library. He’ll be safe there.

            “Come here,” the guy says. “Let me see your pass.”

            It’s the law. Any free person can demand Sam’s pass. Sam hands it over and the guy flips it over his shoulder. “Wow, running around with no master and no pass.”

            Sam considers bolting and running. But it’s the middle of the day. Cars are going by on the road. He has his phone in his pocket. Best to do as he’s told.

            “You hungry?” lightning and iron cross tattoo asks.

            Sam shakes his head. “No sir.”

            “You’re a big buck, aren’t you,” says another man, a guy with a ginger beard.

            Sam doesn’t answer.

            “Why don’t we all go for a ride,” says lightning and iron cross tattoo.

            “I can’t, sir,” Sam says, “my master—”

            “You refusing an order, boy?” lightning bolt and iron cross says and they reach for him.

            Sam has been sparring with Dean. He’s not good at it, it’s hard for him to hit Dean, but he knows he’s big and he knows he’s strong. He hesitates because it’s an order and he can’t hit them. Assaulting a free person is grounds for euthanasia. That hesitation costs.

            They grab them and he screams, “GET OFF! HELP!”

            Nobody stops.

 

#

           

            Sam is crowded into the middle of the seat with lightning and iron cross tattoo driving and ginger beard in the passenger seat. The third guy is sitting in the bed behind them. He is fucked, he knows he is fucked. He’s going to die and Dean is going to think he didn’t wait at the library like he was supposed to. (He recognizes that this is far from the most important issue at the moment but it bugs him.) The interior of the truck cab smells of beer and stale cigarette smoke. At least he’s not cold. It is starting to snow flurry again.

            They don’t go far, turning down a country road and stopping by a little asphalt bridge, water less than three feet below it. Doesn’t look as if they’re going to hang him. Maybe they just want to beat him up and leave him. Maybe they just want sex.

            Tattoo turns off the engine and gets out of the truck. Ginger Beard pulls Sam off balance and yanks him towards the door of the truck but Sam is lankier and more awkward than he anticipates and so ends up half out of the truck, half in. Sam tries to claw his way back into the cab but Tattoo grabs the collar of his hoody and pulls him the rest of the way out.

            “Come on, boy, we’re just getting to know you!” Tattoo bellows.

            Sam finds himself on his hands and knees in the gravel and grass by the side of the road. Not far away there are trees. Maybe if he can make it to the trees he can lose them.

            He scrambles to his feet and the third guy is already there, swinging a bat that cracks across his back and kidneys and sends him sprawling. He can’t breath for a minute. Before he can get his wits collected they are hauling him to his feet again and holding him up while one of them goes over him from shoulders to knees with the bat. He can’t breathe, can’t think.

            They drop him.

            He can’t tell how badly hurt he is, it feels as if everything is one big throb.

            “You like to suck cock?” one of them says.

            He closes his eyes. The gravel is poking his cheek.

            “Come on, that’s what the white ones do, right? Suck cock?” He thinks it’s Tattoo. He feels something patter against his back and smells piss.

            Then there’s a little pause. Maybe they’re done. He tries to get some air and think about what he should do. He tries to get his arms under him to get up, to crawl to the trees, but one of them kicks him hard in the side.

            They lay into him with the bat and with boots again and he curls up and covers his head with his hands. The bat is merciless and he never knows where it’s going to hit. Once it hits the side of his head and he hears the crack in his jaw.

            They stop again and Sam knows better than to try to move, even if he could. His senses seem exaggerated. He smells cigarette smoke and hears their boots crunch a little in the gravel as they shift their weight.

            “What now?” He thinks it’s Ginger Beard.

            “Let’s chain him up,” says Tattoo. “Needs a little sanding, don’t you think?”

            “You sure about this?” asks one of the others.

            He hears Tattoo hawk and spit but doesn’t feel it if it lands on him. He can’t even breathe without it causing pain so he tries to keep his breaths shallow. His hand hurts with a bright white lancing pain.

            Someone grabs his ankles and there’s a rattle of chains. The chain is cold against his ankles. He knows what a sanding is but he can’t gather his thoughts well enough to really comprehend. They wrap the chain around his calves and ankles and then there is a little space to be still, to hope that they are done.

            The engine of the truck starts up and he hears the opening of “Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode pouring out of the radio. Tattoo whoops and the truck starts moving. Sam is jerked, flipping onto his stomach from his side. ‘Keep your head up’ he thinks, gravel scraping across the heels of his hands. He doesn’t want it in his eyes. He screams, he can’t help it. There’s a really loud pop and the truck must stop because he’s not moving any more. They haven’t gone very far, maybe a dozen feet?

            He sucks in great gasping painful gulps of air.

            “Get out of the truck,” someone says in a deep, cold voice. It sounds like Dean.

            “You here to pick up your piece of trash?”

            There is a brief pause and then, “I said, get out of the car.” Dean fires and the bullet hits metal. Gunpowder and cigarettes and fat white snowflakes in the gathering dusk. It gets dark pretty early this far north, Sam thinks. His thoughts are each and every one of them perfectly clear but he can’t chain them into anything. The truck door opens and there’s a crunch in the gravel and—

            Sam jerks when the gun fires again and Tattoo, at least he thinks it’s Tattoo, screams.

            “Anyone else want to try?” Dean asks. “You, get him unchained.”

            Tattoo says, “Goddamn goddamn you degenerate cocksucking fucker.” He keeps swearing, a long monotonous tirade which Dean ignores. Sam turns his head but he can’t see out of that eye. It feels swollen shut.

            When his ankles are moved he barks a startled exclamation of pain.

            Dean snaps, “CAREFUL!”

            “Jesus!” Ginger whines, “Don’t blow my head off!”

            “You have no idea how tempting that is,” Dean says. “Now. Get in your truck and get the fuck out of here.”

            “I can’t drive, you asshole,” Tattoo says. “You put a bullet in my leg!”

            Sam catches a glimpse of Dean out of the corner of his eye, stepping to take a stance.

            “SHUT UP, HYDE!” says Ginger. “Help me get him in the truck!”

            Scuffles and noises. Sam can feel his pulse in his aching jaw. Tha-thump. Tha-thump. The truck finally moves off and one of the tires is flat enough to flap.

            Dean kneels beside him. “Let me look at you,” he says. “Let me look at you, okay Sam? Just going to check you.” His hands hurt but Sam tries not to flinch. “It’s okay, I got ‘cha. I got ‘cha. Can you talk to me? Say something. Did they hit your head?”

            “Don remember,” Sam slurs, barely moving his mouth. “Jaw hurs.”

            “Okay. We’re gonna get you patched up, you hear me? This is okay. I’m gonna get the car and pull up right next to you so don’t move. Just wait, okay?”

            Sam finds himself laughing a little. Like he’s going anywhere.

            Getting into the car is ugly but Sam manages to stand. He can move his legs, no problem. He can’t straighten up, it hurts too much, but he can allow Dean to let him down into the passenger seat. He reaches out to balance with his left hand and yanks it back when it feels like an electric charge goes through it.

            Then they are moving. Dean is here. He’s in the car. It’s all okay. It’s okay.”

            Dean keeps up a steady stream of nonsense the whole way. “You’re okay, banged up bad but we’ll get you to a hospital and you’ll be okay.” Sam realizes too late that Dean is taking him to the nearest hospital.

            “No,” he slurs but Dean pays no attention. “Noooo,” Sam says again.

            “It’s okay, we’re pulling up to the ER,” Dean says.

            “No,” Sam slurs again. “Slave.”

            “Yeah, I know, but don’t worry. It’s okay.”

            Dean stops in front of the doors and gets out. “I’ll be right back.”

            Sam leans his head gently against the window and waits but he knows. Dean comes back with an orderly and a wheelchair. Sam’s left hand is a white hot mess of pain but he holds it up when Dean opens the door. It takes the orderly a minute but then he says, “We don’t see slaves here.”

            “What the fuck?”

            “This isn’t a slave facility,” the orderly says.

            “He’s my brother!” Dean says.

            “I don’t care if he’s the pope. He has to go to a slave facility.”

            Dean exhales through his nose. “Where’s the nearest?”

            “Madison,” says the orderly.

            “MADISON?”

            Sam closes his eyes. Eye, since one is already swollen shut. “S’okay,” he says. “Hotel.”

            “We’re not going to the hotel,” Dean says. “You’re telling me you’re going to turn him away?”

            “I’m telling you it’s against the law to take him,” the orderly says. “He has to go to a slave facility.” The orderly rattles off an address.

            So they drive. It’s really snowing. Snow is so silent it’s kind of amazing. It goes through the headlights of the car. As it gets warmer he can smell piss from where they peed on him and for all he knows, maybe he peed on himself. He really likes this hoody. He’s never had one before. He hopes he can keep it but he doubts it.

            “It’s okay,” Dean says at one point. “It’s getting a little icy but don’t worry. Nothing I can’t handle, Sam.”

            Sam doesn’t know if he can worry. If he cares.

 

#

 

            His hand and jaw are broken, probably from when he was trying to shield his head, and he’s peeing blood. They get him out of his urine soaked clothes. They wire his jaw and cast his hand. Dean nearly takes the head off of the woman who asks if he wants pain relief for Sam, telling Dean it’s an out of pocket cost. The hot pulse of pain recedes in Sam’s jaw as the stuff takes affect. They debride his hands, picking out gravel.

            Hours. It feels like hours. He can’t keep track of time and sometimes the pain starts coming back, rising and rising like the water level in a sink, and then they’ll put something in his IV and the pain will drain a bit. He wishes they would put more.

            He never passes out but he doesn’t remember when they got him to a ward. He wakes up to pain, groggy and stupid. He’s in bed. The stuff in his mouth is annoying and his jaw hurts but not as bad as his hand. He closes his eyes and drifts and opens them a couple of times before he’s awake enough to register he’s in a ward full of beds, all down both walls. Someone starts singing and someone else, a woman, says, “Hank, that’s enough.” It smells like bleach.

            Dean is sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed, looking through a newspaper. He needs a shave. He glances up, “Sammy,” he says and smiles. “You’re awake.”

            Sam nods.

            “Yeah, I know, it probably hurts to talk. I’ll see if I can get you something, okay?”

            He means pain meds. Sam thinks he should say no but he doesn’t. He’s never been in a slave hospital before. He would take Tom, his old master with Parkinson’s, to the doctor’s office and it was in a building connected to the free person’s hospital, so he’d been in there.

            The ward is crowded, the bed is too narrow and too short and the mattress is lumpy. But the sheets are clean. He’s got a catheter so he doesn’t need to pee which is weird but there it is.

            Dean comes back with a cup of orange juice and a straw. “No pulp,” he says and helps Sam sit up, raising the bed. “Suck it through your teeth.”

            It tastes great. Better than the orange juice in the little container at the fast food places they sometimes stop at for breakfast.

            “I’m sorry,” Sam says through his wired jaw.

            “For what?” Dean says.

            “This,” he gestures at himself.

            Dean clenches his teeth, jaw muscle moving. Then he softens. “You don’t need to be sorry.”

            “How find me?”

            “That thing you showed me how to do on your phone. To track it.”

            Sam doesn’t know what to think. It was something he found. Something he showed Dean.

            It’s awhile before the Ward nurse, a woman with a bar code on the back of her own hand, comes and gives Sam an injection of something. She’s a hard woman who doesn’t bother with niceties. Even for Dean, which Sam wasn’t sure was possible.

            It feels warm and a little fuzzy. Dean says, “Sam. This is on me. I’m sorry.”

            Sam is having a bit of trouble following so he lets that wash over him.

            “I didn’t understand,” Dean says. “I kept sticking you out there, sending you places alone. I’m gonna get this fixed, Sam. I promise.”

           


End file.
